Jul 272007
For me, lover of repetition and cool bass parts, the list begins with “Poptones” and “Marquee Moon”. I don’t know about these songs never ending, but I bet I could listen to their main grooves for a good 16 hours. The heroic bass playing of Paul McCartney on “It’s All Too Much” could keep going as well. For whatever reason – repetitive groove, lyrics, what have you – what songs do you sometimes wish would never end?
I once filled an entire side of a C90 with permutations of the Art of Noise’s “Moments In Love.”
The Bogus Man.
Big Steve’s loop:
The Bogus Man.
Steve, do you just mean that end part with the mouth sounds? I find that bit way hypnotic. I like the whole song, and can see you meaning that. But numerous times, it gets to that part at the end, and I’m doing something across the room and I almost always get distracted by the anticipation of which “chk-hh” is going to be the last one.
Boy, I’ve just been going over some PIL again, here, and I love that crazy bass on the first records. Wobble left after the second, right? Well, the first two bars of the song “Public Image” are some of the most potent lead-in seconds I know. The sense of expectation, knowing the song, never fails. On that record, it’s Annalisa and Low Life. Sad on the video, though that if you need to keep looking at the band, don’t stand out in front of them. But I’m sure that was the least of their trouble, live, from what I hear.
Most songs in that 16-hour category for me, have to be fairly minimal because the repeated lyrics and hooks wear badly. I like The Window, from the first Flying Lizards album in that way. Chris Pastore once passed out in a house where L.A. Woman was playing in another room with the arm over. [To youngsters, that’s the way you used to play one side of a record repeatedly.] He never liked them, or that record, but specifically he developed an aversion to Hyacinth House. Mr. Mod, wasn’t 16 hours about the time you listened to that PIL album with some others in rotation? I assuredly have felt that way bout Another Green World in its entirety, and several of the songs from LKJ in DUB.
[PIL digression.]
I had Never Mind the Bullocks on lp and various downloads and rips. So I took it out of the increasingly interesting Allentown Public Library yesterday. As I was loading it into the laptop, I was reading up on them on Wikipedia, and was, well, firstly I was entertained at the notion that Vivienne Westwood told McLaren to get John to sing in his band. He did, and she said, not him, the other one. She meant Sid Vicious, whose name was John. It’s funny to think what it would have been like having Sid as front man for the Pistols. The jaded sarcasm would have been off the scale. As I read, Rotten continued, as he always has to make me laugh and piss me off simultaneously. The got thrown out of some club, or country or city, I don’t know what, but he acts hurt and says, “I don’t get it. We were just trying to destroy everything.” Funny. Sad, though, that he meant that only as an entertainer. He was the kind of anarchist where, as soon as you couldn’t steal the necessities from the Thrift Way or get them from the government, you run screaming for law and order. Somewhere between Nationalism and Fascism, there is a door with an A with a line through it. So what I wonder at, is that PIL stay in my list of viable art purveyors of the late 20th century. And I have to believe it isn’t because of the conceit of self-aware hoodwinking ennui they were hawking. But altogether, this music appears to be almost accidentally good. I’m kind of criticizing them the way people always criticized Big Mess plays. That we were bad at what we were doing but that didn’t stop it from being good, and not just in a so bad it’s good way. How about that! So those are todays thoughts under the heading “I like the Sex Pistols and PIL more than I believe they deserve.”
The Zombies “This Will Be Our Year” I can sing that song through and through and the way he sings it and the piano, I can’t get enough, and it seems like the end comes way too fast… A perfect pop song in that way…
General, I know what you mean about the chk-hh sound at the end of The Bogus Man, but I find the whole thing hypnotic. A friend of mine who was spending a lot of time in the car crossing Lake Pontchartrain told me he used to zone out to that song. So I put it into Sound Forge and looped various sections of it until the song filled up an entire 80 minute CD. I wonder if he still has a copy. Chk-hh … [long exhale]
For long driving trips I wish I had a mix of the Cure’s “A Forest” that lasted several hours. I always think of driving on the Interstate when I hear that song.
Wow, I love The Bogus Man, but I think 80 minutes of the end would drive me out of my skull. It would be a great way to signal to your friends that the party is over. I bet you could get someone to cluck like a chicken every time they hear the word “limousine” if you did that with evil intentions.
I like the riff in Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. Where it sounds like planes diving out of the sky. I like RFTT better than Pere Ubu, but either one will do just fine.
30 secs over tokyo is awesome.
2k: here’s an ohio related memory for you, since your post made me pull that song out and rock port richmond with it: i once saw the ohio to philly transplant band “blue” play that one for about 20 minutes: bassist / singer sharpie on the floor, humping the stage, singing the song, with his bass under his stomach, and guitarist david lowe ramming the headstock of his guitar up sharpie’s ass. and somehow, though all of this, that riff continued to play.
i gotta give it up for the figure on which jumpin’ jack flash fades. i always imagined that they jammed for 30 minutes after the fade.
VU’s “what goes on?”. once, in the bro jt 3, we played that for about 20. here: i wrote a poem about it:
people kept dancing.
good acid.
finally, there’s pavement’s “the hex”: from the first time, ever i heard this song’s face, it wouldn’t stopp playyyiiinnnnggggggg innnn me.
2k, it’s not 80 minutes of just the end part looped. The song consists of 5 or 6 distinct chunks, and I looped each one a different number of times and shuffled the order around back and forth between chunks to create the 80 minute extended mix.
oh ismine, greeeeat one:
the hex – me too – fantastic song! terror twilight. mmm…!
The last ten seconds of Pinball Wizard.
Part 2 (the dub) of Max Romeo’s Open Up the Iron Gate.